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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26148304">Equilibrium</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasidheRose/pseuds/CasidheRose'>CasidheRose</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar &amp; Max Gladstone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Enemies to Lovers, F/F, i promise this idea was a joke and it had no right to be as hot as it ended up being, omniscient time travel milfs, pseudo-crackship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:41:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,180</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26148304</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CasidheRose/pseuds/CasidheRose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Commandant (This Is How You Lose The Time War)/Garden (This Is How You Lose The Time War)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Equilibrium</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealeafthief/gifts">tealeafthief</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>On this frontline strand, carefully balanced to remain coherent in the wake of distant upthread struggle and meaningless, endlessly overwritten triumphs, the representatives of two utterly inimical paradigms have arranged to meet. It’s the only place they could possibly meet, but to call it no man’s land wouldn’t be strictly accurate. There is life here, fighting and struggle, but none of it quite germane to either of their causes. As far as any of the strand’s groundlings are concerned, moored to their mundane passage of one second at a time, it isn’t even a warzone. Perhaps surprisingly, the two unimaginably huge forces that are both extending a single point of themselves to make contact here agree. They are both completely certain that they’ve already won.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Commandant arrives first, inevitable as a tectonic shift, borne from a movement of roboticists centuries in the making. She wears a body that is flawlessly sculpted, equipped to handle every possible physical challenge, and utterly graceless. Ignoring the mere mortals around her, already knowing every detail of their quotidian footfall, she cuts through the dazed early-morning commuter crowd to the predestined coffee shop. The gravity and deadly focus with which she is treating such a quaint establishment would be amusing, if Commandant cared at all for the concept. She takes her seat, flatly ignores the server asking for her order, and waits.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is not left waiting for long. Her counterpart, who is absolutely the sort to find amusement in the idea of a universe-shatteringly significant meeting taking place in a café, has only decided to be fashionably late for her own inscrutable further amusement. Before long, the eyes of an otherwise insignificant passerby flash sharp viridian, and the woman’s features seem to sharpen too, coming into almost oversaturated focus as she glides over to sit across from the machine goddess incarnate. Garden smiles like it’s the easiest thing in the world, a smile that’s launched a trillion blooming worldships, and it bounces off Commandant’s slate-grey countenance like a seed pod against the hull of a dreadnought.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know I cannot understand this...frivolity.” The Agency’s overlord holds an expression of slight consternation on her face for a precise moment before lapsing back into neutrality. “Are you here to surrender?”<br/>
</span>
  <span>“Oh, darling!” Garden’s laugh is husky and warm and perfect, and Commandant would be caught off guard if they’d programmed her with the ability. “And here I was thinking none of you had any sense of humour. You’re full of surprises!” She leans forward conspiratorially over her herbal tea, every movement effortlessly beautiful.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Commandant smirks.<br/>
</span>
  <span>“I am familiar with the concept, thank you. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to know, though, what with your pitiful attempts at reconnaissance across those thirty-third centuries CE.” Garden knows this game, and her smile deepens. <br/>
</span>
  <span>“Come now, don’t be so grounded as to think that a mere few strands that far downthread matter in the slightest. Did my embedded agent in strand 6122 Tenochtitlan mean nothing to you?” Commandant, in turn, knows that there was no such agent. A lesser commander might fear that she had missed something, that the jab was more than a bluff, but the very idea is anathema to her. <br/>
</span>
  <span>“Hrm.” It is a sound of amusement, in the same way as an emoticon is the face of a loved one.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Commandant puts the war at large out of her mind for a few moments. She is able to do this because she is certain that victory is assured. Her posture is ramrod-straight to Garden’s casual lounging, her skin paler and rougher, her eyes perhaps colder, but this conviction is perfectly mirrored between the two, and they each recognise it in the other. With deep amusement on Garden’s part and grim resignation on Commandant’s, they speak simultaneously.<br/>
</span>
  <span>“Of course, we’re still going to win.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Garden sighs breezily, knowing what would happen but enjoying it to the fullest nonetheless. She catches Commandant’s eye again - a surprisingly elusive target - and poses a simple question.<br/>
</span>
  <span>“Does this matter, then?”<br/>
</span>
  <span>“Excuse me?”<br/>
</span>
  <span>“Forgive my gaucherie, but come on. We both know we’re both here to gloat. Aren’t these physical shells just that - expendable imitations? Why even meet physically at all?” Commandant’s look of consternation returns, picture-perfect, rendered with an identical arrangement of myomers beneath pseudoskin as she begins and cancels several possible answers in a simulated split-second. Eventually, she realises she has lost this skirmish, and concedes with as much limited grace as she is capable of.<br/>
</span>
  <span>“Go on. Why?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Garden’s smile widens, predatory and all but bloodstained.<br/>
</span>
  <span>“The only reason those such as us would ever meet in such a form would be to use its...distinct possibilities for interface. We have fought in braids and conspiracies, broad strokes and fine structure, across all of existence. But something tells me, glittering godhead, that you’ve never even considered immersing yourself in it, becoming red in tooth and claw.” Her gorgeous visage almost slips, such is the hunger behind those verdant eyes. “Why not let me share with you, in this pointless strand, what cruellest war can look like?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their eyes lock, green and grey transposed, and spacetime twists around them and spits them out downthread. It’s impossible to say who did it, but when the chromatic aberration and ultrasonic whine have faded, two worlds in the shape of women stand alone in an empty war room, a calculated six inches between them. There is a moment of total silence and stillness. Such moments are forbidden fruit for combatants in such a war as theirs, and they both savour it as fully as what is to come. But a moment is defined by its ending, and when Commandant’s undeniable movement crashes into this moment and crushes it, it’s forgotten as quickly as it began.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The machine is efficient and firm, backing her adversary against the concrete wall smoothly as their bodies and mouths collide. Garden’s lips taste of life itself, and she grins into the kiss, relishing the spark on Commandant’s tongue, copper and blood and ozone all at once. They move against each other, pushing and pulling and yielding in a dance more improvised than anything either woman has dared consider before. It’s hot and rough and full of venom, unspeakable sentiments bursting from both sides and crashing like waves against the hard crag of Commandant’s biceps and the swell of Garden’s breast. They are so shocked, by themselves and each other in equal measure, that they almost forget themselves and their missions. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But such operatives cannot forget, of course. Long or short, beautiful or banal, all moments must come to an end. When the plasma cannon roars into life from beneath calloused pseudoskin to sear Garden’s vessel, and the poison seeds erupt from their hiding places in Commandant’s mouth to rupture her cerebellum, neither of the two is surprised or upset in the slightest. They let go, and fall back to distant downthread homes, both urging their bodies to forget the arcing aftershocks of sensation before their respective headquarters take notice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Elsewhere, the war goes on. </span>
</p>
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